Ukraine foreign minister says in doubt about Minsk truce
Ukraine says it doubts that the European-brokered truce with pro-Russia forces will hold long, pointing to the lack of trust between Kiev and Moscow.
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin made the remarks on Tuesday in Japan, where he is meeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his counterpart, Fumio Kishida.
“There was always a problem of lack of trust in relations between Ukraine and Russia.... We can’t rely on any kinds of agreements between us and Russians,” he said.
Describing the situation on the ground in volatile east Ukraine as “very difficult and tense” despite the ceasefire, he noted that shelling by pro-Russia forces continues in the region.
The Ukrainian foreign minister (pictured below) emphasized that the distrust between his country and Russia makes it necessary to have what he called a “consistent position of the whole international community for defending Ukraine peace and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Ukrainian army said on Tuesday that three of its servicemen were killed and nine wounded in shelling of government positions.
During peace talks in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk on February 11-12, the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed on the withdrawal of heavy weapons from Ukraine’s frontlines and a ceasefire, which officially went into effect late on February 14. The warring sides, however, have continued to engage in sporadic clashes.
The Ukrainian top diplomat called for an end to any kind of shelling as well as close monitoring and verification by the monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Russia-Ukraine relations
Klimkin further rejected the possibility of normalization of ties between Kiev and Moscow unless the region of Crimea is returned to Ukraine.
“There could be no slightest way of normalizing or getting back to business in the relations between Ukraine and Russia without returning to status quo and establishing full Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea,” he said.
Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17, 2014 and formally applied to become part of Russia following a referendum a day earlier, in which 96.8 percent of participants voted in favor of the secession. The voter turnout in the referendum stood at 83.1 percent.
